Electrophotographic developing processes are widely used in copiers, printers, facsimile machines and other instruments to generate an image corresponding to an electrical signal. An example of an electrophotographic developing printer is a laser beam printer (hereinafter referred to as an "LBP"). The general structure of an LBP using the electrophotographic developing process is disclosed in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 5,002,266 entitled "Sheet Feed Apparatus for Image Forming System" issued to Kikuchi et al. on Mar. 26, 1991.
Although electrophotographic developing processes have been extremely instrumental in the advent of the modern office, devices utilizing such processes have proven themselves to be disturbingly temperamental. One particular problem plaguing this art is the commonly occurring paper jam. Many efforts have been made to lessen the inconvenience of paper jams. One such effort is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,878,428 entitled Control Method Of Transporting A Cut Sheet In A Printing Station And An Apparatus Using The Same, issued to Watarai on Nov. 7, 1989. Watarai discloses a control method having steps of: detecting a paper jam in a feeding unit, stopping a transporting mechanism in the feeding unit, continuing operation of other transporting mechanism until sheets in printing and ejecting units are ejected, and then stopping the other transporting mechanism. Although this method has merit for avoiding toner contamination, I believe that the method can be improved upon.
A more recent effort at paper jam elimination is disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 5,257,070 entitled Selective Control Of Distributed Drives To Maintain Interdocument Gap During Jam Recovery Purge, issued to Miller et al. on Oct. 26, 1993. Miller et al. disclose a method for systematically purging copy sheets from various zones of a paper path in a predetermined order based upon the particular disposition of the copy sheets in the paper path zones. Although this method appears effective, I have found that it is unnecessarily complex and that it can be simplified.